General Events

Author: friesandmilk

This weekend will be Super Bowl LII (52) in frigid Minneapolis, Minnesota. The New England Patriots will be making their second consecutive Super Bowl since 2003-04 and looking to win their sixth Super Bowl championship in franchise history. They will face off against the NFC champion Philadelphia Eagles.

If they win, the Patriots sixth Super Bowl championship would be a historic legacy builder for quarterback Tom Brady and head coach Bill Belichick, the winningest QB-head coach combination in NFL history.

The Patriots won 5 Super Bowls with Brady/Belichick at the helm: (XXXVI-2001, XXXVIII-2003, XXXIX-2004, XLIX-2014, LI-2016)

They have won the AFC East nearly every year except for 2002 and 2008, missing the playoffs, they have won 10+games in the NFL for a long time, and they look like they are healthy every year. Tom Brady is 40 years old, and he looks like he will be in the NFL for the next 5 years. Coach Bill Belichick does not look like he is ready to retire from the NFL either.

The Patriots are one of the greatest dynasties in the NFL, maybe the greatest. But dynasties do come to an end, and some day, the Patriots dynasty will be over. Will the Patriots dynasty end on Sunday? Even if, the Patriots dynasty will go down in history in spite of the NFL’s salary cap, parity era.

Stay tuned.

The New England Patriots have been the class of the AFC since 2001, winning 5 Super Bowl championships in the 2000s and 2010s.

It is the holiday season, where friends and family gather around together and celebrate the holiday season and reflect on the year that was. This holiday season, most people are relieved that 2017 is coming to a close, and that a new year-2018 is anew.

Christmas is a time for reflection, a time to look at each other as human beings and as friends and family members. It is a time to think about the year that was and look forward in classic Christian blessings-love, humanity, understanding, hard work and honesty.

Jesus Christ was born on Christmas Day, and Christmas is one of the most universal holidays in the world. People from Israel, United Kingdom, South Africa celebrate this noble and grand holiday.

Remember this holiday season, look forward to the year in advance and be thankful-as you were during the Thanksgiving holiday.

The Christmas season is a time of careful and close reflection. Remember what the holiday is all about–the birth of a baby named Jesus Christ who changed the world.

It is the first day of Winter 2017-18, December 21. On December 20, the House of Representatives voted 224-201 to pass the “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017”, in which Republicans feel that will grow the economy and allow American workers and consumers to save their tax money once they get tax returns starting Jan 1, 2018 and beyond.

However, Democrats feel that the Republican tax cut legislation will further increase income inequality and raise high taxes on the middle class and the poor, while rich people would benefit.

The question remains…will the tax cut bill cost the Republican Party in 2018? They already have a slim Senate majority with the election of Alabama Sen.-elect Doug Jones (D-Ala.). Two of their senators, Sens. John McCain and Thad Cochran, aging senators with health problems could resign due to age/health in the next few weeks. Their states, run by Republican governors would appoint most likely Republican successors as interim senators and a special election would occur by the resignation date and 2018–the day during the 2018 midterm elections–the first big election of the midpoint of Trump’s presidency.

Arizona and Mississippi are conservative states, but have a growing demographic of African Americans and Latinos. A moderate Democrat could win in these states like Jones did on Dec. 12 against pedophile Roy Moore. If a Democrat could appeal to minority voters in the Trump era in those two states, pickups could be bright for Democrats to take back control of the U.S. Senate for the first time since 2012–in 2014, the G.O.P. won control in a low-turnout midterm election.

The past three seasons, the Indianapolis Colts have been a disaster. They have never been the same since their 45-7 loss to their AFC rival New England Patriots in the notorious 2014 AFC Championship Game.

Colts quarterback Andrew Luck has been injured since then in a 2015 Colts season in which they were favored to get over their rival Patriots to a potential Super Bowl berth crashed and burned to miss the playoffs for the first time since 2011–a Peyton Manning-less Colts season. The next year, 2016, they missed the playoffs again, and they will miss the playoffs again this year in 2017. The Colts are currently 3-11. A disgraceful season with no franchise quarterback Luck and injuries, also with a head coach in Chuck Pagano who looks burned out, the Colts must make a decision about Andrew Luck? Will he return as the franchise quarterback, or should they start anew and look for a different quarterback in the 2018 NFL draft?

These two teams have been the NFC Super Bowl representative this decade–the 2010s. The Packers represented the NFC beautifully in Super Bowl XLV in 2010 as they defeated the Pittsburgh Steelers. Years later, the Atlanta Falcons represented the NFC in Super Bowl LI last year, in where they famously led the New England Patriots 28-3 one their way to their first Super Bowl championship, that was taken away from them in overtime play, when the Patriots came back and won it all-giving the Patriots’ fifth Super Bowl championship to Brady and Belichick.

Tonight, these two teams will face off in a battle of NFC royalty. They are the two top teams in the NFC, and maybe all of football, and these two teams faced off in the NFC championship game, in which the Falcons destroyed the 2016 10-6 Packers in a 44-21 thrashing to win their second NFC title in franchise history.

It’s Labor Day, the first Monday in September, September 4, 2017. The day is dedicated to the hardworking people of America who keep America running with their hard work, grit and persistence.

Usually seen as a holiday that marks the unofficial end of summer, barbecues, beaches, parties, the beginning of the school year. It is a day to recharge, honor laborers and workers and to understand the working people of America. Unions are vital to working people, especially today in the 21st century, and it provides benefits and a strong sense of community and solidarity.

Happy Labor Day-remember to understand the true meaning of what Labor Day means–hard work and determination.

As the 2020 Democratic presidential primaries grow interesting by the day, two New York Democratic politicians may put their hats in the ring for the 2020 presidency and a potential primary fight between the two could destroy the Democratic Party more than Clinton vs. Sanders in 2016 and Obama vs. Clinton in 2008.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio is heavily favored to win reelection this November against presumptive Republican mayoral nominee Assemblyman Nicole Malliotakis and right wing populist Bo Dietl, a former NYPD police officer. New York City is overwhelmingly a Democratic city, despite the conservative bastions of Queens and Staten Island and although De Blasio has legal and political issues, he is a lock for reelection. He won the 2013 mayoral election with one of the lowest turnouts in over fifty years, at 24%. The 2013 mayoral primaries was worse, at 20%.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has always harbored higher political ambitions. After being elected as state attorney general in 2006, he saw the Albany dysfunction that he railed against in his 2010 gubernatorial victory, as liberal scions Eliot Spitzer and David Paterson had rocky governorships. Cuomo defeated right wing populist Carl Paladino in 2010 and won reelection in an uninspiring way against establishment Republican Rob Astorino after facing a left-wing progressive challenger in Zephyr Teachout, a former Fordham University law professor.

Cuomo and De Blasio represent the warring wings of the Democratic Party. Cuomo is from the centrist New Democrat wing from his mentors, Bill and Hillary Clinton. De Blasio, also mentored by Bill and Hillary Clinton, comes from the left-wing insurgent group of Bernie Sanders, Keith Ellison and Barbara Lee.

The two men could run for president in 2020, and if they face off in the Democratic primary, their personal feud could enter nationally and the Democratic Party could face a bitter division worse than Clinton vs. Sanders—and it could hand Trump or Pence the White House in 2020.

With the May 9 firing of F.B.I. Director James B. Comey by President Donald Trump, some Americans and analysts believe that his already contentious presidency is over. With the fact that he lost the popular vote to Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton despite winning 306 Electoral Votes of the U.S. Electoral College, his presidency has started with chaos since he was inaugurated on Jan. 20, 2017.

Ever since the post-election report that Russia had interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election to “undermine faith in the U.S. election and to help their preferred candidate, Trump, 70, who has had ties to pro-Kremlin leaders and groups, Trump has faced headwinds and a call of “illegitimacy” after these reports had been released to the public.

With Trump’s approval ratings a all-time low for a first-term president in his first few months in office and with the Democratic and liberal base strongly against anything that he does, the only group that he has strong support is his core base of white working class voters in upper Midwestern states and Southern conservatives, and Northern and Western white ethnics. Some core Trump voters include some white voters who have not cast a ballot for any political office in years due to the disillusionment of the American political system and American society.

Russian President Vladimir V. Putin has long despised former Secretary of State Clinton, blaming her interference in his political career in the early 2010s. It has been seen that Clinton and Putin has had a very frosty relationship and had Hillary Clinton won the presidency in 2016, that relationship would have worsen.

With the firing of Comey, some say that he is trying to erase any evidence that Russia had colluded with the Trump-Pence campaign to win the presidency. With his failures on some of his core campaign promises such as the terrorist ban, his Obamacare repeal confusion and failures, and a lack of a economic agenda, Trump’s chaotic presidency may be over already. Or is it?